I bought this Mac G3 system at the local thrift for $ 50.00 the the other day. The whole system including monitor was sitting forlornly in a shopping cart by the register. I liked it because it was translucent ice blue and pretty, and I’ve never played with a Mac before. It came with a translucent ice blue 17 inch monitor, mouse and keyboard, and a translucent Wacom tablet and pen.
The specs (off the rear label) are as follows-
Macintosh G3 - 350 Mhz
12 gig hard drive
128 megs RAM
Zip drive
DVD drive
USB (round!) mouse + USB keyboard + Wacom tablet and pen
Apple 17 Studio DisplayFlat screen (it’s heavy for a 17" monitor!)
It’s got a bunch of USB and firewire connectors on the back and someone has installed what is either a SCSI card or printer port in one of the (assuming PCI) rear card slots. The StudioDisplay monitor is really neat with a crystal clear display, and looks like it’s about to walk away on those big translucent legs. It also worked fine with my big 19 inch Mitubushi 900U monitor.
All the hardware seems to function perfectly. It came up with a gorgeous desktop (OS 10.2. or something) some of the stuff is kinda-sorta intuitive, but I’m really just stumbling around with it. It gave me a message on startup about “classic startup found no system folder on the boot volume from which to start finder” (what?). I just bypassed this and got to the desktop. I was surprised when it was smart enough to auto-detect the internet LAN connection through my router and jump on the net automatically (smart like tractor!) . The look and feel really is magnificent. The one button round mouse is very weird but servicable. ( you mac people like these round mice?)
Anyway this thing is (according to the rear label) a 350 Mhz machine which in the Windows Intel world is a hearbeat away from boat anchor, on the other hand it’s configured more like a 600-700 Mhz plus class Intel machine component wise. Is this thing worth trying to do anything with or is it too limited to invest any time into? Can I upgrade it? Best to give it away to a charity? eBay it? What?
The round mice suck. Get a different one. Unless you play the latest games, or are heavily into Photoshop, you have a nice useable machine.
To stop the “classic startup” message, go into System prefernces (from the apple menu) and select your OSX starup disk.
Mac specs are entirely unlike and barely related to Windows specs. What you’ve got is a perfectly decent machine for most applications - surfing, etc. $50 was a steal. “Latest games” won’t be much of an issue on the Mac, of course. Hey, play around with it, see if you like OS X. If it dosen’t already have Safari on it, download it (for free) - it’s a nice little browser. Who knows, maybe you’ll switch!
If you don’t want it, you probably could do okay on Ebay with it - probably make at least some money off it.
You CAN run older versions of Photoshop on a G3 just fine. I’m running 5.0 on mine with no problem. Has levels and everything. Working with files sufficiently large to print from would be a pain, but Web graphics, even quite large ones, are OK. You can also do T-shirt art easily on it.
If it can run OSX.2, your machine is just about as good as the one I’m typing on now, which does everything I need it to do. Slow, perhaps (though mine is a 500 Mhz G3 so not all that much more powerful) and definitely in need of at least 256MB of RAM, minimum (just to power OSX properly, really, and absolutely if you want to run Photoshop, iMovie, or populate iPhoto with hundreds of photos in multiple albums) and you’ll want an external HD to store your documents, etc. if you do a lot of work, but a stick of memory that’ll get you up to speed is less than $100 and an external HD not much more. And even if you went up to 512MB, which would be optimal, you’d have a reasonably up to date, very useful machine for less than $300-$350 and you can’t beat that with a stick.
If you don’t want to put more cash into it, I’d buy it from you for twice what you paid, plus shipping. (I mean that sincerely, my e-mail is in my profile.)
I wouldn’t only go off the system specs off the back of the machine. That’ll only indicate what the machine came with standard. Who knowd what the last owner did upgrade wise?
You can see what your new machine has on it for certain by clciking on the “?” (apple) menu in the top left corner. From there select “About This Mac” and click the “More Info…” button. It’ll then bring up a window that lists all you Mac’s specs, and what devices are on each port, video card specs… all that stuff.
You got a great deal on that Mac. It’s a good machine even for doing graphics work, as long as you got the RAM (say 512 or higher). May i suggest upgrading to OSX 10.3 (Panther) if you really enjoy using OSX. The latest version has some really nice stuff in it.
Also, as Zsofia said, Safari is a great web browser… check it out if you haven’t already. It should be in your applications folder.
And iChat is a great Instant Messenger that also works with AIM.
Hey, play around with it, see if you like OS X. If it dosen’t already have Safari on it, download it (for free) - it’s a nice little browser. Who knows, maybe you’ll switch!
(I mean that sincerely, my e-mail is in my profile.)